


if faith is what you gave me

by pigeonfancier



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: City of Sigil, Kelemvor - Freeform, Multi, Polyamory, planescape - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 07:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonfancier/pseuds/pigeonfancier
Summary: The war of the celestials plagues the Planes. Father Midnight had been born into the Army of the Damned, and Father Dawn had fled from it, long before Rose was ever born. Sigil is the one place in all of the planes that is safe from the machinations of the Powers above. It is the reason his parents fled here, decades ago, because the Lady of Pain is no god, and she will not tolerate their divine agents within her halls.Rose has seen what has happened to those who bring them in. His parents have tended their bodies, and set them aflame in the great central hall of the monastery, to allow their return back to whatever powers they had worshipped.Those flames had burned hot enough to scald.Raised as a servant of Kelemvor, Rose is an aasimar child who has no idea what menace is plaguing his dreams.. or what to do about it, save turning to his mother.





	if faith is what you gave me

SIGIL, THE OUTLANDS  
THE DILUTION OF THE SEEDS OF A THOUSAND ROSES  
FROM THE HILLS OF MOUNT CELESTIA  
AGE 10

 

\---

When he opens his eyes, the ceiling has been torn away, and in its stead is a beast with a thousand eyes, each glowing brighter than any torchlight he’s ever seen.

Rose cannot stand to look at it. But when he pulls the cover over his head, it does not fade: he can feel the heat of it on his cheeks, burning his skin like the fiber doesn’t exist. The light doesn’t hurt. It never hurts. It feels like a hundred thousand things, but none of them have ever been pain.

He hates them all the same.

He presses his eyes shut. The light peels through his lids as easily as the blanket, but this way, he has a distraction: he can count each of the veins that spiderweb across his skin, one by one, and try not to think of the thing looming above him.

BOY, it says, the word like a caress: WHY DO YOU HIDE?

BOY, it says, as soft as his mother’s hands: WHY DO YOU FEAR? I ONLY WISH -

\---

“- that you could get some sleep,” Mother Dusk tells him, brushing his hair back.

Mother Noon is an outsider. She’s spoken to him before of how, in the Prime Plane, there is a glowing ball in the sky that lights up the ground, bright enough it used to leave her skin covered in burns and welts at its highest point. She’s told him how, when it fell below the surface - for there was a surface, there, and a horizon - the sky would grow so dark that nothing could be seen, for miles and miles, darker even than the sewers. He’d thought it fake, but Father Dawn had confirmed it as true, for he had travelled to the plane of the Celestials, and it’d been very nearly the same.

Sigil doesn’t have any of that. Outside of the curved planes of his window, the distant roof of the city is dark because the Lady of Pain has willed it, and it will brighten only when she chooses. The only light right now is the few windows, like his, that are lit from within - and the flickering of the flame in his mother’s hand, casting an uneven light across her features as she wipes away his tears.

“What do you fear, son?” she asks him, and the words are close enough to make him shudder. Her hand stills. She’s a small woman, his mother, made all the smaller by the halfling in her veins. “Is it bad dreams?”

“I..”

“If you don’t wish to tell me, that’s fine.” There’s no candor in her words. And that’s what makes it worse when she adds: “- I only wish to help, if I can.”

He shakes his head, pushing himself up so quickly that his blanket falls. The room’s cold without it, but he can still feel the heat of the creature’s gaze on his skin. It sits, and it watches him, and every morning, lately, he wakes feeling as if he’s burning out from within. “I -” He swallows. “I want to tell you,” he says, “but -”

The war of the celestials plagues the Planes. Father Midnight had been born into the Army of the Damned, and Father Dawn had fled from it, long before Rose was ever born. Sigil is the one place in all of the planes that is safe from the machinations of the Powers above. It is the reason his parents fled here, decades ago, because the Lady of Pain is no god, and she will not tolerate their divine agents within her halls.

Rose has seen what has happened to those who bring them in. His parents have tended their bodies, and set them aflame in the great central hall of the monastery, to allow their return back to whatever powers they had worshipped.

Those flames had burned hot enough to scald.

“I’m afraid,” he says, and then: “- can you tell me how I was born, again?”

“You are the Dilution of the Seeds of a Thousand Roses,” she tells him, pulling him in close. He’s too large to fit into her lap now, and has been ever since he was nine and first dwarved her overnight in size. But she can tug his head onto the bird-bone of her mantle. Mother Dusk always smells like meat. It’s the cost of working with the dead: long after the fragrance of rot has worn away, after the lye has scrubbed the last dredges of disease from her body, the tang of bodies still clings to her skin. It’s soothing, in a way. All of his parents smell like this, even Noon, and when he is old enough to help with the work, he will as well.

“Before you were born,” she says, “Mother Noon was sick. We thought you would die from it, but she would be fine. It happens with infants, sometimes, that a body cannot sustain them, and Kelemvor takes them early. And she is a very small woman.”

“She’s taller than you,” he objects, and he’s rewarded with his mother’s laugh, soft and warm.

“Everyone is taller than me, son. Ah. But. You were born, instead, nearly a full month early, and when you were, we found the sickness had gone deep into her veins. It had spread to you, and we thought the both of you would die, for it would not fade. And you were small, smaller than even your sister had been --”

Rose peers up at her. His parents faces always go so strange when they speak of his sister. If it had been grief, he thinks, he would recognise it; the halls of the House of the Dead are always filled with mourners, but he has never seen his parents weep over her, or rend their garments, or cry out to the gods.

No. Their face’s always just go soft and bright, like a candle has been lit behind their eyes. It’s always as if they’re staring at something he has never been able to see, and it’s a queer thing, to feel as if he’s been left alone in a room full of people.

“Tell me about her. I don’t remember her,” he says now, and the light dims.

“She was like you. She was taller than all of us, save Father Midnight. Think of the embers in the hearth: her skin glowed like that, when she was happy, and her cheeks flamed like that when she was mad.”

“Like Father Midnight,” he says.

“Like Father Midnight. She had the stars in her cheeks, and the moons in her eyes, just like him, and she was brilliant, just like you. Kelemvor says..” His mother wets her lips. “Our deaths are foretold,” she says, in the tone she uses when she’s comforting someone, “and our deaths are natural. To re-enter the cycle is to be a part of the planes. They should not be fought, when they come, and they should not be feared. We prayed, and we were assured that what would happen would, and we were told to set our minds at ease.”

“And we tried. We tended to you, and we tended to Noon, and we placed our faith in Kelemvor, that he would do as was best for the both of you. But Lily..”

“She didn’t believe,” Rose prompts her, because he’s heard this story before, and the words are as familiar as the hitch to his mother’s breath. She’s stroking his hair, rhythmically, hard enough he can feel it in his roots. “Not like you or I.”

“She didn’t,” she admits. “And she is - was - afraid of death. So she left the monastery, and she left Sigil entirely. She journeyed across the Planes, while you languished, in search of her solution. For she knew your Father Midnight had fled the Blood War, centuries before, tired of the ceaseless cruelty, and she knew that once, he had his own father, who must have missed him dearly, and she knew.. she was just like him. So she fought her way through the frontlines, and she brought herself to the core of things, and she said: if you will give me the seeds of the rose from the hills of Mount Celestia, so I may bring them back to my family, then I will give you my allegiance, for as long as you wish it so.”

“I don’t know how the negotiation went. But I know that your sister did not just succeed. She triumphed. She came back, just when the two of you were on the edge of the Fugue Plane, and she created a poultice from the seeds for Noon, to strip the poison from her veins, and to soothe the damage it had caused. And for you..”

“She crushed them,” his mother says, “and she fed them to you, one by one, until the ichor of Celestia ran through your veins. And she fed you water from the shores of Celestia, until you glowed with its light. And that’s why we call you the Dilution, because you have supped on the food of the gods, and you have drank their drank, and it is with their blessings that you have blossomed.”

“Would you have just let us die, if she hadn’t?” Rose asks, and his mother stills.

He’s never asked this before. But the light is low in the room, and the rest of his parents are asleep, and.. Father Midnight’s answers, when Rose questions him, always lead into a lecture. Mother Noon never speaks much at all. Father Dawn is too silly to talk to about anything, too quick to laugh, too quick to smile. He’s always certain his father is mocking him, for all that the thought fills him with guilt.

But Mother Dusk always answers. And for all that she stills, he’s not surprised when she finally says: “- yes.”

“But why?”

“The way of Kelemvor,” she says, “is acceptance. We do not lash out against the rising sun, Rose. We do not mourn what cannot be changed, for everything is a cycle, and everything will happen as it is meant to happen.”

“Do you miss her?” he asks, and he knows it’s a cruel question as soon as she closes her eyes.

But she still answers. Mother Dusk is his favorite of his parents, and this is why: no matter how clumsy his questions are, no matter how much he stumbles, she will always answer. “Yes,” she says now, slow. “I love her. We always will. Her intentions were good.. but one cannot embrace Hell and emerge unburned, and it is wrong, if a death is Kelemvor’s intention, to turn to his enemies for a solution.”

“We wished for the two of you to live. It was our greatest desire, all of us.. but what are our desires, compared to those of our God? What she did was wrong.” She hooks an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in close, and buries her face in his hair. “But I love her for what she did,” she says, “and the cost she paid for it. Have you been dreaming of her, Rose? Is that why you’re asking?”

Mother Dusk is a small woman, but there’s strength in her arms. Curled against her, he feels safe. And that’s why he manages: “- something speaks to me, while I sleep. It says..” Here, tucked against his mother, the room lit by the hazy glow of the candle, the dream feels so distant. “It says that evil is the desperation people face,” he says, “and that it doesn’t matter what you do, so long as your intentions are pure.” He shifts to peer into her face. “But that’s not true, is it? Lily..”

“Lily was wrong,” she tells him, gently but firm, and she pulls away, shaking out her robes when she steps lightly onto the floor. Mother Dusk has halfling in her, and elf, and a hundred other races: not for the first time, Rose wishes he inherited the slightness of her frame, and the delicacy with which she moves. “Wait here.”

When she returns, she’s holding something.

Mother Dusk lifts his hair neatly from his neck. There’s cool metal against his skin, then the click of something snapping into place. When he looks down, there’s a locket secured there, so small that he can scarcely feel the weight of it against his skin. Kelemvor’s scales are carved into the front of it, perfect gilded lines in the gold of it. It’s finer than anything else they own. His parents are not ones for jewelry, for all that Father Dawn hoards books and fabrics.

“This was your sisters,” Mother Dusk says. “If you dream of this again, let this remind you of the lies in their words, and rest easy in the fact you know the truth.”

\---

When he opens his eyes, the ceiling has been torn away, and in its stead is a beast with a thousand eyes, each glowing brighter than any torchlight he’s ever seen.

Rose cannot stand to look at it. It burns his eyes when he tries, and it makes a warmth blossom in his chest, unfamiliar enough that he cannot stand it. But tonight, he does not pull the blanket over his head. He does not cower until his pillow, weeping, trying to block out a voice that he does not understand, one that will not cease in the messages that it offers.

Instead, he sits up.

BOY, it says. It sounds surprised. It sounds like Mother Dusk, almost, fond and warm, as if it has any right, and it’s hard not to close his eyes against it. YOU RETURN.

He does not close his eyes. He sits up instead, pulling in his knees until he’s kneeling. Then he takes a hold of the locket. It’s small in his hand, almost miniscule, but it’s cold. Compared to the heat above him, it’s as cold as a balm.

BOY, it says, and he takes a deep breath.

“Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead, Judge of the Damned,” he says, and now he closes his eyes, the better to focus on the words, “our Lord, we, thy faithful followers, pray to thee for the strength to do thy bidding…”


End file.
